Of Machine Guns and MOOCs: 21st Century Engineering Disasters

If teaching is what we do, do we not owe those seeking to learn a reassurance they are at least on a seaworthy ship? How much of the good ship MOOC is built on the same blueprints as many noble vessels whose buoyancy has long since proved questionable? Somewhere Leonardo di Caprio stands on the bow of Google Reader.

E-learning necessity, the mother of e-learning invention, guarantees a certain degree of e-learning development. Yet how much of the history of e-learning isn’t our inventions from our necessities, but instead the co-option or shameless scavenging through web 2.0 technologies looking for inspiration? Imagine e-learning without blogs, or Twitter, or Facebook, or forums. Do we really think of our LMSs as built for us? How many are seaworthy? Disaster might be too rich a term for this, but put 50016 people on board the good ship MOOC and now it is something akin.